SQ6 crashes at sickbay console

[Satch]

this has been an issue for me since before SQ6 made it to steam. I'm saddened to see its still there with Steam. anyone have a fix?

[bliss]

Running SQ6 inside ScummVM[www.scummvm.org] may work, but you'd have to start from the beginning, as it uses it's own savegame system.

[Satch]

After dealing with the crashes all these years, I'm a pro at the first part. Starting over will be a breeze lol thanks for the tip, I'll test it out and report back.

[arch]

How do you run in ScummVM?

[Lugum]

Originally posted by arch:

How do you run in ScummVM?

Just download it, point the exe file (the dos one, not the launcher) to it and load, it's simple.

[Adeadpsych0_0X]

Everyone talks about it crashing, but last time I tried it got hung up but I clicked (to advance dialog) several times and waited etc and it started up easily. I'm not saying that it isn't a real problem, just that I guess I'm fortunate the little trick worked for me. Maybe it would work for others like it did for me?

[Mister Neil]

You can actually make the launcher boot the games from ScummVM by messing around with the INI file.

[ww_brierson]

It seems that it's working with legacy mode.

What I've done:

Copy my savegames (SQ6SG.000 and SQ6SG.CAT) from the non-legacy (C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Space Quest Collection\2016_SpaceQuestCollection\sq6) to legacy sq6 (C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Space Quest Collection\sq6).
Run with legacy sq6 (runs slower).

After the crash point saved the game and copy back to non-legacy sq6.

Run again on non-legacy sq6.

[Satch]

I'll be damned, this thread is old af but here you are, fixing the game for me lol thanks a lot my friend

[0pp0]

There's a fix for this over at Sierrahelp: http://www.sierrahelp.com/Patches-Updates/Patches-Updates-Games/SpaceQuestSeriesUpdates.html

I personally don't use ScummVM for Space Quest 6 cause it messes up some individual instrument volume levels in the MIDI music.

[v.dienes]

I fixed it in non-legacy SQ, no patch needed. Seems that current CPU-s emulates too fast in DOSBox, which is source of this crash. Just go to DOSBox config file for SQ6 and set emulation CPU cycles from auto (which is fastest emulation I guess), to something like 40000 (which is equivalent of some late 486, early Pentiums). This works for me.

config file: <SQCollectionFolder>\2016_SpaceQuestCollection\sq6\DOSBOX\dosboxSQ6.conf

line to change: 'cycles=auto' to 'cycles=40000'

[Lunarpsych7]

Originally posted by v.dienes:

I fixed it in non-legacy SQ, no patch needed. Seems that current CPU-s emulates too fast in DOSBox, which is source of this crash. Just go to DOSBox config file for SQ6 and set emulation CPU cycles from auto (which is fastest emulation I guess), to something like 40000 (which is equivalent of some late 486, early Pentiums). This works for me.

config file: <SQCollectionFolder>\2016_SpaceQuestCollection\sq6\DOSBOX\dosboxSQ6.conf

line to change: 'cycles=auto' to 'cycles=40000'

^This did it for me! Thank you!

[panthesys]

Originally posted by v.dienes:

I fixed it in non-legacy SQ, no patch needed. Seems that current CPU-s emulates too fast in DOSBox, which is source of this crash. Just go to DOSBox config file for SQ6 and set emulation CPU cycles from auto (which is fastest emulation I guess), to something like 40000 (which is equivalent of some late 486, early Pentiums). This works for me.

config file: <SQCollectionFolder>\2016_SpaceQuestCollection\sq6\DOSBOX\dosboxSQ6.conf

line to change: 'cycles=auto' to 'cycles=40000'

years later i can confirm this fix still works!!!

thanks a bunch community

[Proxy_J]

Originally posted by Satchking:

this has been an issue for me since before SQ6 made it to steam

This has been an issue since it was first released on floppy disks lol The original fix was to download a save file from Sierra that was already past that point

[blgussiaas]

I know this is a very old post but this issue seems to happen when using the DNA card on the compost reader. I was able to work around the issue by turning the detail to 0, turning speech off, and turning scrolling off. I'm guessing only one of the settings are needed to be used but I'm not sure which one exactly.

<edit> saw what the other guy posted about the dosbox cycles I didn't try that fix yet but that sounds like a better one to me anyway. If I have any other crashes playing I'll try that fix instead.

[Proxy_J]

Originally posted by blgussiaas:

I know this is a very old post but this issue seems to happen when using the DNA card on the compost reader. I was able to work around the issue by turning the detail to 0, turning speech off, and turning scrolling off. I'm guessing only one of the settings are needed to be used but I'm not sure which one exactly.

<edit> saw what the other guy posted about the dosbox cycles I didn't try that fix yet but that sounds like a better one to me anyway. If I have any other crashes playing I'll try that fix instead.

I'm old af, so I saw this happen in real time. Apparently, the original root cause of this was some problem with the quartz oscillator, the developer's systems used some weird version that most people's PC's didn't play nice with